Have you ever had trouble getting people to fall in love with your blog?

If you’re wondering how to get an enthusiastic audience to come to your blog over and over, this simple guide is for you.

Rabid means intensely passionate. A rabid fan is worth 100 casual readers. Maybe even 1,000.

Without rabid fans, your blog will fall short of its potential and your business will suffer as a result.

Building a rabid audience is like building a community: it can be hard work, but it’s well worth the effort.

Step 1: Create a mouth-foaming object.

In my Blog Community Building guide, I call this an “object of adoration.” It’s the centerpiece at the dining table. It’s the campfire at the campfire. It’s the glistening bowl of Toasty Oh’s, milk splashing in from the sky, in the middle of the cereal box.

It’s something to gather around and talk about. Something to focus on.

Something people can get rabid about.

These MFOs or OOAs work best when they create a gathering place around you and your products/services.

Step 2: Get lots of toothpicks.

And cut your object in pieces and stick the toothpicks in the pieces and hand them out to everyone. As they walk away chomping, call out, “Tell your friends!” Better yet, say it with a smile as they curiously take your offering from your warm hand.

Step 3: Watch for the foamers.

They’re out there. It’s a scientific fact of nature. Someone who sees what you’ve done, who’s tasted what you’ve concocted, will discover it and experience an epiphany of ecstasy. They’re baking soda and your stuff is vinegar.

Look closely, though. Sometimes the foam bubbles only on the inside.

Step 4: Reward Rabidity.

Rabidity is unbridled excitement.

Scene 1: It’s Christmas morning at 4:13 am and you’re 5 years old and Mommy and Daddy still haven’t woken up. The unspoiled wilderness of unopened joy awaits. You’re not just foaming. You’re frothing like a freshly made root beer float.

Scene 2, Fantasy: By 6:13 in the morning you’ve thundered through every last shred of wrapping. You glance upward plaintively at your loving parents. They snap their fingers and POOF! A brand-new mountain of gifts materializes before your dinner-plate eyes. Rabidity rewarded.

Scene 2, Reality: 10 o’clock came and went and all Mommy and Daddy got you among the shimmering boxes, bows, and bags was undies and socks. Rabidity rejected.

Which Scene 2 would you rather watch?

Which Scene 2 are your rabid blog lovers watching?

Rabidity is easy to reward. Just give them more, more, more.

That’s one of my favorite books to read to the kids. Especially the part where …

See, now you’re curious. If I don’t reward that smidgen of rabidity, I’m rejecting it. There is no middle ground with foamers.

Especially the part where Little Guy’s Daddy catches that baby up and smooches him right on the belly button.

What kid isn’t gonna laugh and beg, “More, More, More?”

That’s It … Lather, Rinse, Repeat

That’s it. Do those four things and you’ve started to build a rabid blog audience.

In coming weeks I’ll share more detail on each of these steps.

images by Dictionary.com and liber

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Step-by-step tips on this topic next week.

Which step is the hardest for you?

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Step 1: Increase Your Awareness

How much do you know about improving blog traffic?

You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and you can’t measure what you don’t see.

So your first task is to become more aware of the subject of blog traffic building.

Google the topic. Talk to people who know how to increase blog traffic. Scour social media sites like del.icio.us, Digg and StumbleUpon. Devote some time to research.

The greater your awareness, the better your ability to drive traffic to your blog.

Step 2: Sharpen Your Focus

Why did I use the word “build” in the title of this article?

Because building requires long-term vision. You have to decide what you want the result to look like before you start to produce it.

If the question were, “What’s the easiest way to get more website traffic?” I’d smirk and suggest that you insert the names of a few female pop celebrities into your article headlines.

But who would come? How long would they stay? What would they do? How often would they return?

Numbers mean nothing by themselves. They become meaningful only as you make them represent individuals like you and me.

In other words, don’t just seek more traffic. Seek more of the right kind of traffic.

The right kind of traffic is the kind that will do what you want it to do. It’s the kind that will directly satisfy your online goals.

So it’s time to sharpen your focus. Decide exactly who your ideal blog visitor is (e.g. a thirtysomething geek named Kip who lives in his grandma’s trailer home in rural Idaho, hogging her dial-up Internet connection and frequenting online chat rooms) and what you want him or her to do (Buy your product? Subscribe to your feed? Click on an ad? All of the above?).

The sharper your focus, the better your ability to drive the right kind of traffic to your blog and convert it into positive results for your business.

Step 3: Hone Your Discernment

Awareness and focus are great. They help you learn how to get people to your blog, identify who you want to visit your blog and decide what you want them to do once they get there.

But without discernment, you’ll eventually fall short.

You must be able to discern clearly between the blog traffic generation methods that work well for your blog and the ones that don’t.

So get and use excellent blog traffic monitoring tools like Sitemeter, Google Analytics and CrazyEgg (to name a few). Check them once a day for a minute or two. Take some extra time once a week to dig deep into your blog traffic stats and evaluate what you are doing and how well it is working.

Pay close attention to your decision-making process. Why do you come to the conclusions that you do? Think about your logical processes and resolve to make smarter traffic-building choices. Write down your results and thoughts and plans continually.

The more honed your discernment, the better your ability to decide which methods of blog traffic generation to use and when.

Step 4: Excite Your Imagination

The first three steps of the Visionary Blogging method are somewhat nuts-and-boltsy. You need them in order to get your blog traffic off the ground.

The fourth is anything but. And it can make your blog traffic soar.

It’s time to galvanize that dusty, rusty imagination of yours.

Every week when you sit down to evaluate your blog traffic progress and devise new traffic-building plans, take a few minutes to let your mind run wild. Go nuts. Picture a billion visits to your site – what what make that happen? Picture 50 absolutely perfect blog visitors going crazy on your site – buying stuff left and right, leaving comments by the boatload, running through their virtual and real neighborhoods screaming your name and URL in ecstasy. What would make them do that?

Isn’t imagination fun?

There is no such thing is a lack of traffic-building opportunities … only a lack of traffic-building vision.

Where you cannot see opportunities, it’s time to create your own.

There’s more lateral thinking to supercharged blog traffic generation than you might, er, imagine.

So be creative. Create. Use your imagination.

The more excited your imagination, the better your ability to create new ways to build your blog’s traffic.

Step 5: Strengthen Your Diligence

By now you’ve become a more aware, more focused, more discerning, more imaginative traffic-building blogger. Way to go!

But all that effort can make you tired. (If it doesn’t, you might not be trying hard enough.)

That’s where the fifth and final step comes in.

When the blogging gets tough, the tough blogger kicks it into fifth gear.

It’s diligence time, baby.

Don’t give up. Don’t stop. Pause for a moment when you need to catch your breath, but then get right back up and keep hiking toward the summit.

Don’t get complacent. Don’t get jaded. Don’t get crusty. Don’t start thinking that there’s nothing else you can do to increase your blog traffic or make it boost your bottom line more effectively.

Every week in your blog traffic evaluation/planning, take a few minutes to review your own diligence. How hard did you work? How little time did you waste? What could you have done better to build your blog traffic?

Write down the answers to those questions. Insist on the routine. Make some goals and write them down too. Don’t lose sight of your goals.

And work, work, work like a mule.

A good motto: “I will work harder and smarter to build my blog traffic this week than I did last week.”

The stronger your diligence, the better your ability to endure the natural fickleness of blog traffic and develop a long-term strategy for smart blog traffic building.

Conclusion

As you apply the five steps of the Visionary Blogging method to your blog traffic building efforts, you will enjoy an increase in the right kind of traffic to your blog and those visitors will do more of what you want them to do.

Please, please try it. It’s not easy, but it’s pretty simple.

Just take a minute right now to decide when you’re gonna do something about this article – preferably today or tomorrow sometime. Set 30 minutes aside for it in your calendar. Then, when you get to it, read this article carefully and decide what to work on first (awareness, focus, discernment, imagination or diligence). Finally, work a few minutes into your weekly blog planning sessions where you consider your blog traffic from the Visionary Blogging angle.

Do it. DO IT. Do it.

May you never again wonder how to build blog traffic. And may you get gobs of it, from the right people, over and over, and may it turn a great profit for you in the long run.

Any questions?

This article is part of a Sparkplugging how-to project.

photo credit: PPDIGITAL

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Related Articles

1. What is Visionary Blogging?
2. Elements of Visionary Blogging, Part 2: Sharpen Your Focus
3. Elements of Visionary Blogging, Part 1: Increase Your Awareness